What Does It Mean To Belong?
(The poster for Nobile's award-winning documentary series, featuring her first subject: Michael D. McCarty. Courtesy of Belonging in the USA Facebook Page.)
Everyone in the world longs for the feeling to belong in this world.
Through families, friends, and even at work, this is a normal feeling to have. In this climate, the importance of knowing your ethnicity has been the hot topic to know your place in the world. What is your place? What is your role? How do you deal?
Arielle Nobile, the award-winning director of the documentary series “Belonging in the USA,: has been getting to the root of those issues and/or ideals with her Facebook Live series, “On Belonging.”
Every other week, Nobile has candid conversations with various guests about the “themes that matter the most”. The Facebook Live events are short insights around the basis of her documentary series, which “challenges us to expand our definitions of belonging” and by speaking with various people of different backgrounds, she hopes to “build common ground in getting to know your ‘neighbor’ (in the vain of Mister Rogers).”
One of the conversations was with Colette Ghunim, a Chicago-based documentarian whose passion lies “at the cross section of social impact and visual storytelling”. Her first documentary, “The People’s Girls,” gained worldwide attention for its spotlight on Egypt’s sexual harassment issue. She is also the co-founder of the Mezcla Media Collective, a nonprofit organization that supports over 400 women of color in film in Chicago. Currently, she is working on her next documentary, “Traces of Home,” which focuses on her journey to locate her parents’ homes in Mexico and Palestine, respectively.
(The promotion photo used for the live conversation. Courtesy of Belonging in the USA Facebook Page)
The live show starts with Nobile speaking to the audience about her intentions for these conversations, especially in this racial climate. She explains that being self-evident is hard, especially for white people.
“I want to be a bridge”, she shared “A translator. [As] you feel belonging, maybe not everyone gets that sense.”
The first question to kick off the conversation was what does belonging in the USA mean. Ghunim shared that we need to be aware of the history that none of us truly belong in the US, due to some of us being stolen from our native lands and the U.S. being stolen from Native Americans. For her, we need to acknowledge that everyone isn’t here by choice: coming here was an escape.
“Acknowledge the different types that are coming here and the reasons they are coming here,” she said. “By doing those two things, you can start thinking about how you belong.”
Ghunim goes into detail on how it is common for Americans to assume that immigrants usually come to the U.S. for a better life, when most of the time, it’s a host of complex reasons. As the child of immigrants who escaped from their own countries, she understands the difficult burden of trying to belong here.
“It’s extremely important to feel like we belong [here], but also know that white people don’t belong here more than we do,.” she said.
The next question asked Ghunim on where she felt the biggest sense of belonging.
While Ghinum grew up in a suburban, comfortable lifestyle and certain privileges (like access to a great education), she says that she felt like something was missing. Her parents had traumas from their past that they never healed from, which affected her, and being comfortable in her own house was difficult.
(Ghunim and Nobile, respectively, during the episode of the On Belonging FB Series. Courtesy of Belonging in the USA Facebook Page)
After traveling outside of the U.S. and going to college, she explains that she was blown away from the warmth of people and the rich cultures that she came from in Latin American and the Middle East. For her, she realized that it’s okay to be “this loud, messy, chaotic person,”, and not this “perfect American”.
“That’s when I started to tap in on who I really was,” she told Nobile.
She speaks on how the places we go shapes and stays with us and how she understood that she could be all of things she is: Bi-racial (Mexican and Palestinian), American, and everything (she added a laugh after that).
“How do you define freedom?” Nobile asks.
“Being able to be how you want to be, act like how you want to act,” Ghunim shares. “Believe in what you want to believe in without hurting other people in the process”.
She explains how a search of freedom is from cultural and personal constraints. She realized through her own experience with her parents that the trauma from their experiences doesn’t allow them to be fully free. She had to dig deep on why she felt a disconnect and why her parents are the way they are, which inspired her to explore her cultural roots and find their homes.
Nobile wonders about where Ghunim finds her sense of freedom? She explains that it's a healing journey with the power of awareness, consciousness, and meditation.
“I am not my emotions, I’m not the trauma that my parents unconsciously passed down to me,” she assures, “along with knowing that separating from your thoughts and getting into your core being is how you are truly free.”
(Ghunim speaks of her wishes for her upcoming documentary, Traces of Home. Courtesy of Belonging in the USA Facebook Page)
Nobile shared a quote from the French philosopher, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience” and adding that there’s no one way to enter the conversation of looking for freedom or belonging as it has many variables.
Then they jumped into learning more about Ghinum’s hopes about her upcoming documentary. Ghinum shared that she wants to inspire healing in other families, talk on how trauma is passed down, and to be able to understand why you are the way you are as certain situations shape our being. She shared how private her family is, which she wants families to be open about their feelings and not be closed off.
“It’s okay to share pain,” she says. “[It] leads to a collective healing. Resolves trouble”.
Nobile dives deeper in wanting to know more about Ghinum’s journey of making her documentary with the question of did she notice a change within herself during her experience. She shares that she felt “way more comfortable” as both sides of her world were very welcoming and warm. Then they discussed how more Americans should try to travel outside of the US to better understand other people and their cultures.
(The official poster for Ghunim's upcoming documentary, Traces of Home. Courtesy of Traces of Home Facebook Page)
“We don’t understand the privilege we have in visiting other countries as most can’t even leave theirs,” Ghinum says.
The last question of the night was regarding what Ghinum is grateful for. She simply states, “Love”. For her loved ones, the community she lives in as well as her fellow creatives as she is able to connect with everyone through video chats.
“I still feel that I’m still in a community with such aspiring people,” she said.